SI Section 58 - Your Source for all Things Star Trek gaming

Star Trek: Away Team

Unofficial, Unseen, Unknown. Star Trek: Away Team is Star Trek'sown commando's. So we know the game is not completely original, but does that really matter, lets take a look. The concept of Star Trek Away Team is unique, Starfleet's own undercover party to handle the delicate matters. This will appeal to more than just the Star Trek fan then, I mean, It's not as if you have got regs to stick by. The ship is cool and the storyline is a great Trek concept, and once again the Federation (and the rest of the Quadrant) is threatened to annihilation, and it is down to you to stop it. The gameplay is smooth and quick to get the hang of, most of it is customizable anyway for your game style. The ship is just a place to listen to briefings and to pick your team. Yes, that's another plus. You can pick your away team by their skills and talents so you can get the best possible squad to get in and out with relative ease. There is a large amount of weapons, from the phaser to sniper rifle (very neat) to concussion grenades. Also, all sorts of undercover gadgets are available to use like the portable brig to clean up those dead bodies. It is fun just playing with your arsenal! Graphics are also very good, the locations, both ships and planet surfaces are very well created with lots of good landscapes and bases with great attention to detail, you can tell that they went to town to giving the game that authentic Star Trek feel, and it paid off by the satisfaction the gamers have made. The game has 18 missions, which should keep you busy for quite a while, but once they are done, you feel you want to play more, so room and want for add-on missions or a mission builder is there. Activision would not be making a mistake expanding this title, like it's First-person counterpart, Elite Force. Once you have turned from single play, you can look to the multiplayer. Unfortunately, this is very bad, and brings this title down. There is no internet play available, just TCP and so forth. The maps are the same a single player, and you are just playing the mission with another player. This needs to be improved if there is going to be any expansion to the title. All in all, Away Team is a great new frontier for a Star Trek game, with a brilliant storyline, good graphics and smooth gameplay. This game is definitely worth buying for any squad strategy or star trek gamers. Away Team has set a high standard for the future Activision Star Trek titles, including the Elite Force Expansion, Bridge Commander, Armada 2 and the later Borg Assimilator.